I’m off!

To see Avenue Q! (Thanks to a friend who is awesome and amazing.)

More later… hopefully!

For real.

I have no idea what I have been doing lately, for real.

I started Yosemite, from this latest knitty and I’m using some sort of Cotton/Soy mixture which feels so freaking sooooffffft. It’s called Cotsoy. I feel hot and cold about this shirt though. First of all, it is a yarn eating monster. It pretty much takes all I have to give and then doesn’t call me back the next day. Jerk. Then there was something weird about the pattern and I was like, wait that’s not right, so I went and checked the pattern and it had been edited. I don’t know if I have feelings about that or not but it did make me think…

It covers the important parts, so I think I’m done.

Then, for my birthday I went out with my dad and he helped me pick out some yarn for a shrug, saying that the color would translate to Spring/Fall.

What do you think? I think it looks kind of Wintery myself. However he does a lot more with color than I do, so I’m inclined to just go with it.

Our birthdays are a day apart, so we usually do something every year. It almost always involves me dragging him into some sort of craft place and making him look at everything. My dad’s a good guy who at least pretends to be interested. I like that about him.

Besides all of that though, I’m convinced that little demons are sneaking in at night and stealing my memories about what I’ve been doing. For real. All I know is that I’ve been losing track of time, hours even. Which makes me worry that I have an alternate personality wandering around. Hopefully they’re like a hot Brad Pitt version of myself. Although, it helps when there are pictures to document the time. Here I am sitting in a big metal/mesh chair:

See, that’s got to account for at least… five seconds of my life.

The other morning I woke up next to this:

Yeesh.

I realized that I am bad at knit blogging because even though I don’t post that often, I usually don’t make too much progress. So you see every step of my knitting process. Here’s a picture of a sleeve. Here’s a picture of the sleeve hole. Now my turtle is stuffed- oh but now he has eyes! Hahaha, I’m a mess. Either way, I am already thinking about the next thing I want to start on and it’s between these two:

Drawstring Chemise

and

Ribs and Lace Tank
(Both pictures belong to Interweave.)

(Ravelry links) What do you think?

Spring Forward!

(Sometimes I honestly groan at my own titles.)

Hey, guess what?

…

(I hope that was enough time to guess because…) I finished the SWF Sweater!

(I’m channeling Reese Witherspoon here.)

I feel pretty good about this sweater! John told me that it looked like I could have bought it and then he went on the compliment my “even stitches”. What a doll baby. I like that no matter what kind of messed up stuff I did to it, it’s still pretty presentable.

First of all, this is the first project I actually swatched for. Then I went ahead and completely ignored the swatch because it told me bad things and called me names. So, I ended up going down a needle size from the preferred or recommended. Okay, no biggie.

Then I remembered my first sweater and how it sits in the hall closet because it is so baggy and just heavy. Which reminded me, always knit down a size when knitting raglans! So, even though I might have been pushing it with medium, I said whatever and knit the small.

Uh… then to compensate at the part of me where I am medium (read: potbelly) I started adding random stitches for my voluptuous curves. Yeah, that sounds way better than potbelly. How this sweater didn’t burst into flames from all the jacked up nonsense I put into it… I’ll never know.

Moral of the story: despite me being crazy, stuff does eventually get knit. Also, this is a great pattern for a first sweater. I think any person who wants to knit a sweater and is scared to do so should knit this one because it is so easy and great and if I can do it- so can you.

(P.S. It snowed and we had a level 3 emergency thinger.)

Pattern: Tree Jacket by the Zephyr Gals.

Yarn: Lion Brand Cotton Ease.

Needles: Size 9 and 8 (I feel like I’m getting some good use out of the interchangeable needle set I got off of eBay.)

Time to knit: About a bajillion years. Or maybe four months…? Aboutish. It took me a whole season to knit a sweater. So by this logic, I should start one every season so by next winter I’ll actually have some sweaters and I can stop wearing my cats.

What I love: Top down! Basically no seaming (since I don’t think I actually know the right way to seam anyways) and all I had to sew up was the arms and the placement of that is just right so no one can see my poor sewing skills to boot. I think I am a top down advocate now.

What I hate: This yarn was alright but I’m not 100% in love with it when it comes to the garter stitch portions. I just think it’s a little too… scrubby… on the sleeves.

Why you should knit it: Because you love it too, don’t front.

Together we can build a better tomorrow.

Follow the Garter Stitch Road…

Somehow I’ve made progress on something…

Okay, so you know things are bad when you get tired of hearing that you’re sick. So I can only imagine how other people feel when they hear that I’m sick. AGAIN… (forever). The first time, I kicked some strong antibiotics back and while I thought it went away and I’d dodged a bullet, turns out I just angered whatever sickness was inside of me to hide for a week, then come out with a vengeance. Leaving me with some sort of awful head congestion cold thing for a week of no knitting, no progress of any sort in any aspect of my life… well except for the being a lazy bum aspect, I’m tops there.

Remember that contest I entered a while back? Well Crazy Aunt Purl sent me a “you don’t suck and I love you even though you didn’t win” prize (aka pity prize if you want to be succinct. psht.) Which included a signed copy of her book, two mixed tapes and a cute thank you card which I definitely hung up on my fridge.

Speaking of fridges, mine is kind of a monster, what about yours?

I have to feed it new magnets monthly or it gets mad and eats my bacon. I can’t have that. I’d post a picture of it but I’m kind of embarrassed at how freaky it is, so post a picture of yours first so I won’t feel so bad.

Also, speaking of books, since I’ve been sick that’s all I’ve been doing. You know, burning them. (Wait, can I get thrown in library prison for saying that?)

(All pictures taken from Goodreads and belong to their respective owners.)

So yeah, if you care about all that, check out my Goodreads profile or leave a message if you have any good book suggestions because I’m always looking.

What else? Oh yeah, someone recommended me as an off beat knitting blog on a livejournal community and described this blog as having “a high cat content and general life content.” (here.) At first it made me antsy, oh no, I’m a high cat content person. (Because I work with a woman who talks to herself a lot and she’s considered a high cat content person. Is that me? Do I talk to myself a lot? Do I have conversations with my cats and not even realize it anymore?) Then I realized I need to stop thinking about it and just embrace my freaky cat crazed blog for what it is. (freaky. cat crazed. rambling and long.)

Sax was almost worried I would get through a post without her.

Hey, since you’ve read this far, do you want my extra copy of Drunk, Divorced and Covered in Cat Hair? If so, leave a message and let me know, if more than one person wants it, I’ll put names in a hat and have the cats pick. If one person wants it, lucky them!

A disturbing experience.

Okay, so first of all I want you to know that I have been so lazy lately. So I’ll show you the knitting first so you don’t have to skip down to see it.

My good intentions scarf.

I had such high optimistic hopes for this scarf. Had the yarn for a year, its just been sitting around… It was supposed to be for a brother in law for Christmas and I thought, I can do it!

Turns out I can’t. Since I knit so many scarves the first few years I was knitting it turns out that I’m totally burnt out on them. Even though sweaters are just big scarves with shaping, I’m still mildly interested in the sweater I’m knitting…

My progress so far…

See, I haven’t taken any pictures of it lately because the work is slow and unimpressive. Also, for some reason in this picture it looks like I decreased or something but really I’ve been adding stitches in whenever I felt like it. I’m just making all sorts of bad decisions when it comes to this thing!

Oh yeah and Baldy? He just sits in his bag crying.

People were getting all crazy and demanding with their Christmas “requests” but luckily Granma was there to save the day! My MIL is a bit of a… over reactor? She was creeped out by the fact that all the Barbies in her house are naked. What else are Barbies supposed to be? Whatever, Granma to the rescue!

Oh yes and my personal favorite, it’s Hammer Time:

How amazing are those pants??

Okay, so in other news: I’m seriously frightened to go out to dinner anymore.

Earlier this week we went to Longhorn, for what I was hoping was going to be a delicious meal. What I got was pop spilled in my lap and a pretty unapologetic waitress. If you’ve been to one of these steakhouses or types of steakhouse, you can verify that their glasses hold a lot of liquid. a lot. She went to go get a towel and mumbled one “I’m sorry” and I kind of grumbled… it’s okay? Although it wasn’t okay. She completely got me and they had sat us right next to a door (another complaint of mine, since it was pretty much empty when we got there, why did we get sat next to the door…?) so I was pretty much freezing.

Did a manager show up to ask if everything was okay? No. The hostess watched it all happen and didn’t do anything either. They were all talking to the waitress like they were all BFF’s. She brought me some chicken fingers and dropped one of those two and was just like, oops! Seriously- worst waitress ever. She was completely uncaring about treating us like crap. Every time I looked for a manager to complain to, nothing. There was a guy who looked like a manager, who I’d make eye contact with and then he’d go the other way. This place was ridiculously shady.

Then the final insult? She charged me for the drink.

Anyways, I emailed them and got ahold of the district manager who assured me that’s not how they typically do things and would I like some gift cards…? Did my pants need dry cleaned? Am I going to murder everyone who works there? Honestly, when people give you the worst possible service, why is it always protocol to give them gift cards to get them back in again? Why not just refund their original meal? Anyways, supposedly I’ll be getting some giftcards and we’ll probably use them at a different location to see what the deal is. (If you live in or near Columbus- NEVER go to the one at 161 and Cleveland.) The real burn is that we went waaay out of our way, passing other better steakhouses (Texas Roadhouse) to get to this one to have dinner with my mom.

Also, since I’ve been insanely lazy (you have no idea how bad I’ve gotten) and haven’t been cooking ANY food, we’ve been going out a lot this week. Last night was our first time going to Jason’s Restaurant and Bar… I feel like this blog post is getting long since there haven’t been any pictures for a couple of words, so I’ll skip right to the reason I’m terrified right now. We ordered potstickers and they were the most delicious potstickers I’ve had, maybe ever. However, we get to one and guess what? There was a metal shaving on the bottom of it!

A freaking metal shaving guys!

Why does the food industry just have it out for me? I think it’s telling me to be less snarky or something… otherwise they’re going to kill me through sharp metal things in my food, or through hypothermia from spilled drinks combined with being next to a door in winter. Yikes!

At least at this place the waiter was awesome. He was upset, explained how it had happened (metal wok, metal wisk = internal bleeding) and comped our wonderful potstickers. Then made a joke about it, which put me at ease and we finally got some attention.

I’m not a food critic, I just eat out when I can, so you can disregard this next part. Something about Jason’s was totally not jiving with me. First of all, it was really busy, there were these huge parties there and they were all quite loud. So I’m not about to blame them for the Really Loud Person (RLP) that was next to us. Not only was she an RLP but she was also a clapper. I mean, she clapped about every two minutes. Like we were at a concert or something.

The thing was, the acoustics in the restaurant were just bad. I’m not the type of person to notice that kind of thing either- unless something is really wrong. Well it was really wrong. On one half of the booth we were in, it was so loud you couldn’t hear the other person. On the other half it was still kind of loud but it wasn’t too bad and it made you go… why is the person across from me yelling?

Jason’s seems like the kind of place where the owner, Jason, makes really good food. However… that doesn’t necessarily mean you should have a restaurant. The parking, like all parking in Old Dublin, sucked. It was really loud. It seemed like a nice place and all but then they had white sheets of paper on the table. That takes the class right out. The acoustics were messed up and there was a metal shaving in my food. However, the food was really good. I think we might go back… on a night that’s really dead. Although, I wouldn’t order what I got because it kind of sucked, since it’s me… and there was probably rat poison in it or something.

You’ll never take me alive food industry!

Why have I been such a lazy biatch lately….?

Oh yeah, that’s right, because of:

Super Mario Galaxy!!!

Plus there’s other life stuff going on. Silly life. Which I’m sure everyone knows about since I’m terrible about email. People ask me a simple question, like “what’s up” and get back a ten page diary about everything. Isn’t that terrible? It’s like, er, thanks.

Anyways, I don’t know about y’all but my attention span has been shot. If something doesn’t have at least one picture now I start to get antsy. Here’s a picture of my shithead cat:

That’s how she lures you. She lets you take a really nice picture of her, acts all nice and cuddly then BAM, cat puke in the middle of the hall at night. Yick.

Also, it was R4′s birthday the other day (a while ago), so I took some pictures of that. Although, I’ve got to be honest, it’s ridiculously hard to get a picture of R4 where he doesn’t look stoned.

I like this one best because he’s in the family stance: smiling and laughing while also subtly threatening you with a fork. He mentally turned 9, however he’s technically 16 now. Geez. That’s scary. Both him and my stepsister are now 16, they were born on the same day. Friggin creepy to me. What happens when they turn 21? Will I just poof out of existence in a cloud of dust?

Also, I promised you knitting. I’m glad I didn’t promise any specific quality of knitting. Whew!

This is the glove I’m knitting for my MIL. It’s still weird to me that I have a MIL but that’s a different story for another time. These gloves… well, they’re a labor of love. Mostly because of the ridiculous amount of stitch holders I needed for… well everything. I still need to knit the cap and put on the button and blah blah blah before this one is every done. They’re pretty easy to make (once you understand what the hell the pattern wants, don’t think just do) it’s just tedious. I mean. Joyful. Hopefully she’ll put them on and experience all the joy I have had making them. Or to paraphrase Garth: I just hope she doesn’t think they suck.

This is my newest project… Okay guys, it’s story time. Hopefully you already know what my stories are like, so brace yourself. I’m calling this my SWF Sweater. Why? Because I totally got all Single White Female on some poor lady without even realizing I was doing it! That’s how freaking creepy I am. I was on ravelry, checking out what my friends were working on and I love everything this one girl does. LOVE. I saw that she was making this really cool sweater, so I was like, alright! a sweater. Because I’ve been in a serious sweater mood since it got cold. I mean, it’s snowing outside people. Or at least it was an hour ago.

Well, if you’ve talked to me lately you might be wondering why I’m not doing the Simple Knitted Bodice and that’s because of a very ‘me’ excuse, which is that the yarn for that will be hella expensive. Even if I sub out what they call for and get Knit Picks instead. However, this sweater, you can sub out and use some Cotton Ease. Hells yeah! So, I’m going through Ravelry, looking at everyone’s tree jacket. Seeing if Cotton Ease really is a good yarn to use, since my last sweater had yarn substitution “issues“. Well, I saw that even the designers are making one out of it and if it’s good enough for the designers of the pattern, it’s sure good enough for me.

So, we run down to JoAnn’s and yes! they have the yarn I want. However, they have some really wonky colors. They also only have random stray balls of the wonky colors. Except for this one color that my husband seemed to like as he was loading it up and walking away with it before I could even check if it was the right dye lot. (Did he like it or just want to get out of the store ASAP? You be the judge on that one.)

I get home and start knitting. Feeling pretty awesome. I swatch (which I’m going to admit, to everyone’s horror- I usually don’t do) and find out that my needles are too small, so I move up a size and it’s right but the fabric looks really weird. So I’m like, cool, I’ll use the big needles, then switch to the smaller ones for the body. (Okay, this is a really boring story so far and kind of knitting slang heavy but I swear we’re almost there.)

Something clicks in my brain. Wait a second, this all sounds familiar. So I go back and check the person who originally inspired me to do this sweater and I freak out. Not only am I knitting this sweater in the same yarn, it’s the same color. Not only is it the same color, but she also swatched, got gauge on the same size I did but liked the smaller size better so is switching them out at the body.

Oh geez, I’m subconsciously creepy, which is probably worse than being ‘just creepy.’